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Friday, August 1, 2014

How much I changed (Part 2) #IndianProblem

From 1830 to 1840, between 70,000 and 100,000 American Indians
living in the East were forcibly resettled by the US Army. Many others
were massacred before they could be persuaded to leave; an unknown
number died from disease, exposure, and starvation suffered during the Trail of Tears as well as on other enforced, long-distance marches westward to Indian Territory.

While the removal policy helped to alleviate the immediate
"Indian problem," as more and more Americans continued to move westward,
they found other Indian tribes living in freedom throughout the
continent. Because these Indians prevented non-Indians from settling in
many desirable areas, and because many white settlers did not feel safe
living amidst the Indian "danger," another new policy was created to
deal with the Indians - they would be confined to a land reserved
exclusively for their own use - areas that came to be called
reservations.

=================================

By Trace A. DeMeyer (Trace Lara Hentz in the near future) PART 2

Child "protection" is one of the biggest businesses in the country. We spend $12 billion a year on it.

The people who are charged to look after abused and neglected children have an important job. I give them that. We all know some states have very high rates of poverty. Most of those states have Indian reservations and based on statistics, most Native children in foster care live in those states. Foster care doesn't solve the poverty problem by taking children away from their parents! It feeds the system that makes money on children in state care. The amount of money spent on social worker salaries and all the other state jobs: billions per year. Read more HERE about Massachusetts, where I live.

Are these social workers and judges aware of this country's appalling Indian history? Maybe, some.

Children on some reservations do experience poverty. The US government who
created these reservations (some say concentration camps) know this,
too. [On this blog, we have covered how this is affecting many Indian families, when their children are taken away. We have also covered in depth what this does to the child who is adopted out or goes through the foster care system.]

We know "their" job as social workers is to make sure all children are safe. When you have poverty, you have increased rates of all the bad things: not enough food, depression, crime, etc. It's a vicious cycle that sucks in new generations. I have been to enough reservations to know this first hand.

Has the government made life better for Indian people since the Indian Child Welfare was passed in 1978? No. The federal government is too busy dealing with all the other problems it creates. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs has been making life miserable for all the tribes since the late 1700s... Back in those days "overseers" and Indian Agents (up until the 1970s) were just like the social workers of today. They removed children from their parents, citing "poverty." Who created this poverty?

I remember the Eastern Pequot tribal leaders told me they were "handled" by the Connecticut Dept. of Parks and Forests. Some of the overseers reports were kept in the CT state archives. If you wanted to buy medicine or cloth or anything, you had to ask the overseer. I was told the Eastern Pequots would return home from work and their children would be gone (and they never saw them again.) With all the dirty politics in that state, this tribe documented their entire history, only to be denied federal recognition! READ

Remember that Tribes deal with the federal government, not state governments. Treaties were legal, government-to-government agreements between two
legitimate governments - the United States and an Indian nation. When an
Indian nation signed a treaty, it agreed to give the federal government
some or all of its land, as well as some or all of its sovereign powers.
In return, the federal government entered into a trust responsibility
with the Indian Nation in which the federal government promised to
provide protection, benefits, and rights to the American Indian peoples
in exchange for some or all of their land. The trust responsibility
bound the United States to represent the best interests of the tribe,
protect the safety and well-being of tribal members, and fulfill its
treaty obligations and commitments. [Source]

If you read tribal newspapers, tribes have been fighting "states" over their treaty rights and the care of their own children ever since treaties - yet this was never supposed to happen!

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was instituted and passed to protect tribal children from state's social workers and other groups (missionaries and organized religions) who steadily removed children. If you read the anthology TWO WORLDS, you will read testimony that was presented to the Senate about this horrific chapter of American history.

What changed my life was finding out the US government condoned and funded the Indian Adoption Projects, affecting thousands of Indian children who were adopted out to non-Indian parents for the sole purpose of erasing our identity and terminating our rights as sovereign citizens in our tribes.

1 comment:

I am so angry at the burocracy and more lies to the American indains that had the land to begin with ,The British seemed to use their armies and just plow down the Indiains to be rid of them,I hae what they did .I see clearly what injustice,at the end did not Geronamo have his last words and prayed to God the spirit ,Judgement day will come and God will have his vengeance with what the white man called himself civilized,not even from her and had the nerve wow ,boiling over and so sorry.Today I wish the high officals in the White house were let go especially our wacked out President -he is a womanizer,oh well hope their just out and finally we get a compassionate person .Honestly they own the army that can kill if we don't go along like what happened to all the whole nation of tribes how sad -How sick those demons are.Haven't read much just hopped on to the comment .Trace I wish you all of everything and it's the people you want justified.God please make it happen<# Gotta go sweety ,Priscilla the search angel found my half sis in California with loads of new relatives wow .Promise to get back with you to let you know what happened ,Priscillas good wow<3

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To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

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ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

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Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

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Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

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